As part of efforts to end a three-year transitional period from military rule, Chadians on Sunday lined up to cast their ballots in parliamentary and regional elections amid opposition boycott.
The parliamentary election is the first in more than a decade in Chad and comes months after the junta leader, Mahamat Idriss Deby, won a disputed presidential vote that was meant to return democracy.
Deby took power in 2021 following the death of his father and longtime president Idriss Deby Itno, who spent three decades in power.
The main opposition party is boycotting Sunday’s vote after accusing authorities of not overseeing a credible electoral process.
One voter who cast his ballot at a polling station in the capital, N’djamena, said he thought the vote was “going well”.
“There are no problems,” Kathima Bagadaye said. “We’re voting in peace, there’s nothing special” to report, he added.
“We wish everyone good luck and hope that the people we voted for do a good job for a better Chad,” said Mahamat Issa Hissein, another voter in the capital.
“We hope for a new page and that Chad will change with this new team.”
The oil-exporting country of 18 million people, among Africa’s poorest, had not had a free and fair transfer of power since it became independent from France in 1960.
The elections this year are the first in junta-led countries in Africa’s Sahel region in a promised but delayed return to democracy.
At least 8 million voters are registered to elect 188 legislators in the Central African nation’s new National Assembly.
Representatives at the provincial and municipal levels will also be elected. Results are expected in about two weeks.
More than 10 opposition parties are boycotting the vote, including the main Transformers party, whose candidate, Succes Masra, came second in the presidential election.
The party has criticized the parliamentary election, as well as the presidential vote that many observers were banned from, as a “charade” and a ploy for Deby to remain in power to continue a “dynasty.”
Masra briefly served as prime minister earlier this year after returning from exile before he resigned to run for president.
Sunday’s election comes at a critical period for Chad, which is battling several security challenges from Boko Haram militant attacks in the Lake Chad region to the break in decades long military ties with France, its key ally.
